Review Summary: A behemoth of noise rock and throwback anthem for 2012.
When we look at albums in 2017, there's not much that touches the world created in the production of an album like Nirvana's "In Utero" and others immortalized in its genre of noisy rock, punk, and alternative. Classics come so rarely despite so many bands trying to reach peaks previously summitted. But with the aid of veteran Steve Albini and a band from Cleveland, Ohio we received one of 2012's greatest anomalies, "Attack on Memory".
Beginning with it's dismally paced and emotionally affected "No Future/No Past" that plods along into an explosive ending. The stage is set for the first chords of "Wasted Days".
A song that feels like an anthem and unified calling. The guitar phrasing on this song and it's verses imply the hope for a better future, carrying the weight of the past, and it's nostalgia and finality. The entirety of the song and its parts feel like an anthem and last hurrah for the future.
The guitars are immediate and frenetically focused. Clean tones intermingle with the 2 bass notes that push a huge jam session through the middle of "Wasted Days". Into it's epic and bombastic drum sequences, that somehow keep peaking over and over into the conclusion of the jam session. The song seems to explode and then reassemble itself before the calls of "I thought I would be more than this" appear again. The line continues until it is almost uncomfortable, but ends leaving a lasting impression. One of the best songs of 2012, and probably the 2010's.
Other highlights include the noisy: "No Sentiment". A song that really carries the same weight as some of the 90's heaviest tracks, and prototypes to this one, in 'grunge' and 'alternative'. This track is also carried by the drama of the lyrics that somehow work with the heaviness of the track, "We started a war, attack on memory...".
Attack on Memory briefly revived a sound that has been starving to be reborn and reinvented in the 2000's and 2010's and gives hope to the future of it's genre, with it's immediacy and melodic prowess. Hopefully Cloud Nothing's can revisit and continue to evolve this sound as they progress as a band.
